Female sexual autonomy and desire in the United Kingdom, 1870-1928

英国女性的性自主权和性欲，1870-1928 年

• 批准号: 2236806
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2236806
• 关键词: Female; sexual; autonomy; desire; United

This project provides the first intimate history of how women in the United Kingdom understand the bodily experience of sexual desire and autonomy between 1870 and 1928. Focusing on letters, diaries, and life writing, it explores how women wrote about (or did not) the intimate realm of desires, pleasures, and bodies, and the languages and ideas available to them. Using ordinary women's voices, this project will build on a growing body of research into sexuality and sexual expression, challenging the existing focus of scholarship on regulation and representation. Going beyond the tendency to focus narrowly on England, this alternative history of women's sexuality will place sex and intimacy at the centre of its comparative analysis of Britain and Ireland, exploring how these experiences were culturally specific. Through this, I will consider how intimate lives became part of the public politics of sexuality, and vice versa.My research will break new ground in taking the intimate and physical as a starting point through analysis of letters, diaries, and other personal testimonies. Sources which cross the public and private boundaries illuminate how intimate lives became part of public sexuality politics. Assumptions that private sources do not deal with sex are inaccurate, as demonstrated by the range of source material available for this project. Drawing on existing research into sexual ignorance, and theoretical concepts of sexuality, I will investigate what these sources can tell us about ideas of sexual difference and normality as historically specific. This project's significance therefore lies in its attention to 'hidden histories' of gender, sexuality and class experience as part of recovering people's stories and experiences from the past, and its social implications in the current climate of debate surrounding female sexual autonomy, resonating with challenges to women's rights in areas such as abortion and sexual violence.The project will develop through an extensive programme of archival research, focused on the identification, acquisition, and analysis of letters, diaries and other personal documents. Cross-cultural comparison between Britain and Ireland will highlight experiential differences moulded by geography and religion, with Irish sexual experience being given little scholarly attention until recently.Current historiography in the field highlights the complexity of researching and writing this history given societal taboos and accessibility of records documenting intimate sexual and bodily experiences. This complexity, however, illuminates the value of exploring difficult questions of sexual experience and understanding, including prevailing assumptions about 'normal' sexuality and sexual behaviour. This contribution to the expanding literature surrounding gender, sexuality, bodies and emotions in the United Kingdom from 1870 to 1928 will thus be situated in an underused and unique perspective concerned with the physical bodily experience and female heterosexual sexual desire.

该项目提供了第一部关于 1870 年至 1928 年间英国女性如何理解性欲和自主的身体体验的亲密历史。该项目以信件、日记和生活写作为重点，探讨了女性如何书写（或不书写）欲望、快乐和身体的亲密领域，以及她们可以使用的语言和想法。该项目将利用普通女性的声音，建立在越来越多的性和性表达研究的基础上，挑战学术界现有的对监管和代表性的关注。超越了狭隘地关注英国的倾向，这部女性性行为的另类历史将把性和亲密关系置于对英国和爱尔兰比较分析的中心，探索这些经历如何具有文化特异性。通过这一点，我将思考亲密生活如何成为性公共政治的一部分，反之亦然。我的研究将通过分析信件、日记和其他个人证词，以亲密和身体为起点，开辟新天地。跨越公共和私人界限的资料揭示了亲密生活如何成为公共性政治的一部分。私人来源不涉及性的假设是不准确的，正如该项目可用的来源材料的范围所证明的那样。借鉴对性无知和性理论概念的现有研究，我将研究这些来源可以告诉我们关于历史上特定的性别差异和正常观念的信息。因此，该项目的意义在于它关注性别、性行为和阶级经历的“隐藏历史”，作为恢复人们过去故事和经历的一部分，及其在当前围绕女性性自主的辩论气氛中的社会影响，与堕胎和性暴力等领域对妇女权利的挑战产生共鸣。该项目将通过广泛的档案研究计划来发展，重点是识别、获取和分析信件、日记和其他资料。 个人文件。英国和爱尔兰之间的跨文化比较将凸显地理和宗教造成的经验差异，直到最近，爱尔兰的性经历才受到学术界的关注。鉴于社会禁忌以及记录亲密性和身体经历的记录的可及性，当前该领域的史学强调了研究和书写这段历史的复杂性。然而，这种复杂性阐明了探索性经验和理解的难题的价值，包括关于“正常”性行为和性行为的普遍假设。因此，这部对 1870 年至 1928 年英国有关性别、性行为、身体和情感的不断扩大的文献的贡献将处于一个未充分利用和独特的视角，涉及身体体验和女性异性恋性欲。